In 2020, sitting on a beach in Goa, India, I hand wrote pages and pages of words that felt sparkling, alive, deeply familiar and yet unlike anything I had ever written before. It was nearly two weeks since I first met Navid, and his powerful guidance had led me to uncover a deep and previously veiled dimension of myself. Since then, life had felt different. Shimmering. Synchronous. Beautiful. I asked Navid about these changes and he said “when you’re ready to see it, the universe will dance for you.” And my god, was she dancing! From the tiny diamonds of light on the surface of the ocean, to the twinkling of recognition I saw in the eyes of strangers, to food tasting better than it had ever tasted before. My mind had a clarity it had never had. I had a lightness about my past and tingling anticipation for my future. But most of all, a profound gratitude for this moment. This breath. This life.
And so here I was, sitting on the beach with a blue sari-wrapped notebook and a sparkly pen with words flowing out of me like they’d be waiting my whole life for this moment. These words guided the creation of something that was going to be a huge catalyst for change in my life. The first words that came through were “Santosha Rose.” Next came the story of my life that had led to that moment, which I published as the first blog on my website – Origin Story, A Fairytale. I then wrote what would become the “About” page for my website and these words just flowed out of me. Effortlessly. Seemingly without conscious thought.
In other blogs I have talked about the intense rush of creativity that propelled the first 6 months of Santosha Rose; the poetry, the videos, the blogs. The vision of what this could become. And about my decision to turn down the heat and keep it at a simmer for the next two years while I finished the work of my day job. What I haven’t talked about yet is the journey I have been on for the last 3 years, of my reluctance to create and grow a “spiritual business,” my fear of true authenticity and how 2025 has been like a growing body of water to break through the dam of these blockages and let everything flow once again.
So, let’s go back to April 2022. I had just left my job and embarked on training to become a Yoga Therapist. I had no idea what I was going to do for work during the two and a half years of training before I could work as a Yoga Therapist, outside of teaching 3 weekly yoga classes. The first opportunities that came up for me related to my old life. An opportunity to give a talk and share wellbeing practices at an event for staff from the statutory and voluntary sector. An opportunity to explore a new collaboration with two friends to create a workplace wellbeing offering to businesses. A course for health professionals to learn about wellbeing tools and how they could support them to manage stress. I enjoyed the opportunity to explore new topics and deepen into my new role as “teacher.”
Looking back, I realise that I also liked the way my past history and “ex-CEO” title enabled me to be credible and acceptable in spaces where practices like yoga may not previously have been embraced. This was despite the fact that I was no longer running a business and was actually pretty terrified of doing so. An ex-colleague asked, “how’s the new business?” and I hurriedly explained “there is no business, I’m just a freelancer.” After many years of feeling the weight of running a business and being responsible for it, I liked the freedom of working in a freelance capacity. I liked the many hats I could wear, and many facets of Sam I could show to make myself palatable to each audience. I liked that Yoga Therapy gave me a clinical language that gave additional credibility for what I was sharing (& for me as the one sharing it).
Last summer, I began the process of creating a new Santosha Rose website to be the home for everything I was offering. It was a nightmare! In my freelance capacity, I had worked in many different places, offering many different things. I used different language in each place. Sometimes scientific, clinical, evidence-based; sometime aspirational, goal-oriented and productivity-driven; sometimes expansive, heart-felt and compassionate. Trying to bring all these offerings, all these audiences and all this language together in one website felt impossible. My brother described my offerings as “really complex.” Which felt ridiculous. How could my work be really complex when it was just me! After many hours of struggle to find the right language, I abandoned my new website project and realised I needed to do some more reflection on what Santosha Rose really was.
There is a concept that in order to create something new, we first have to create space by letting go of something old. I knew this when I handed in my notice for my full-time job without a plan of what came next. What came next would come out of the space I had created. And it did. In the last 6 months I have received nudges from the universe about the something old I need to let go of to make space. And as I have started to do this, the something new has already begun to emerge. Yet this time, the something old is not as simple as a job. The something old is an identity of myself that I’m now finding restrictive, confining and incongruent with the person I am and the life I live.
If you know me well, you will know that the most important dimension of life for me is the subtlest, most essential and hardest to describe, which is often referred to as the “spiritual dimension.” I struggle with this word, because I know it can be evocative, triggering and deeply misunderstood. I also know that the realm of “spirituality” encompasses a huge range of things, some of which do not resonate for me personally. And yet, what this word is pointing to is the most important aspect of my life. Living from this place is the foundation of everything I do, teach and share. And when I am not explicit about this, I feel I am doing everyone a disservice. Like I’m hiding the part that makes everything else come alive.
In January, I received a clear message about what I needed to do. It said, “stop trying to make Santosha Rose acceptable to people it’s not for.” Like all my most important messages, it flowed through my mind and out of my pen. But I knew it had not come from my mind. For the last 5 years I have been receiving these messages, that come from a wiser place than my own mind. I have not explicitly written about this in my blog, because I know this may seem strange or even concerning to some people. That I may seem less “credible.” And yet, I have known for five years that supporting people to wake up to this dimension within themselves is why I’m here. It’s the work I came here to do. And if I’m going to do this, I need to be more honest about this dimension in myself. I need to come out of the spiritual closet!
So that is what I have been gradually doing. Sharing a little bit more about this in my classes. Making this dimension an integrated part of our last 3 Day Retreats. Offering retreats at Navid’s Retreat Centre in Sweden where this is the foundation of what we explore. I have kept this out of flyers and only hinted at it on social media. But I sense that this now needs to change. This year I will launch new offerings where exploring, integrating and living from this dimension is explicit and unmasked. I know there will be people for whom this does not resonate. And that’s ok. There will be teachers who are a better fit for them. But for the people who are looking to explore spiritually in a grounded, safe and supported way, I want to make sure I’m showing up and easier for them to find.
I don’t know what the consequences will be for my work as I become more explicit about how foundational spirituality is for my life. But I know I will not seek out work where I have to censor this dimension of myself anymore. I don’t see myself offering corporate wellbeing where the focus is to teach regulation skills to enhance productivity. Nor do I want to offer therapy with a narrow focus on symptom alleviation. I want to work with people who are interested in the bigger questions of life. Who want to know themselves on all the levels of their being. I want to create classes, workshops, retreats, and hold 121 space for people to explore these deeper dimensions as they create lives that feel more aligned, vibrant and unmistakably alive.
I will continue to collaborate with the wonderful charities I already work with to make my teachings and therapy offerings available to more people. But I will also (finally), be establishing Santosha Rose as a legal entity and increasing the offerings we have here. I am excited to be doing this alongside Kris, who is now such an integral part of Santosha Rose with his incredible teaching, healing energy and wisdom. Together we will be flowing more lifeforce energy into Santosha Rose and giving it the space to grow and flourish into the place of awakening it was always meant to be.
